some of these candles! The waste that goes on in this house is shocking. And beeswax, too! I don't see how M'sieu Viellard puts up with it. I suppose you think you need to fetch him."
"Someone should," said January. "It should be..."
"I can manage here," his mother cut him off coolly. "How far along is she? Is that all? Phlosine"-She looked around, but the girl had vanished fairylike into her friend's bedroom-"Never there when you need them. No more sense than butterflies." She turned her cool gaze back to her son. "You can't suppose that any of those girls are going to be admitted anywhere near a ball at the St. Clair, do you?"
As if, he thought, she hadn't been one of those girls herself.
When he left she was ordering Madame Clisson and Th?r?se to bring in two dining-room chairs and a plank, to approximate a birthing-chair if Olympe didn't arrive in time.
The Hotel St. Clair stood amid lush plantations of banana, jasmine, willow, and oak some distance back from the lakefront; but its galleries opened to both the prospect and the breezes that came off the water.
As he and the groom Cyrus approached the graceful block of brick and whitewashed stucco that was the main hotel, January saw that colored paper lanterns were suspended from the galleries and smudges of lemongrass and tobacco burned near all the windows against the ever-present mosquitoes. Though it was by this time nearly nine o'clock, well after the hour that entertainments began, as he came up the garden's white shell path he heard no music, only the dull muttering of voices, and an occasional woman's exclamation of anger and outrage.
The first-floor gallery was thronged with little knots of people, the men in black or gray or blue evening dress, the women in the pale-tinted silks of summer wear-and the looped, knotted, wired, and lace-trimmed hairstyles they favored these days that made January wonder despairingly if women had taken leave of their senses in the past ten years-sipping negus and lemonade from trays circulated by white-coated waiters.
"Honestly, the woman deserves to be horsewhipped!" wailed someone buried to her chin in a snowbank of lace, whom January vaguely recognized as an aunt (cousin?) of Phlosine Seurat's protector. Through his mother and Minou he was being reintroduced to the interlocking webs of Creole society gossip.
"Well, what can you expect of Americans?" returned her escort, as January skirted the shell path under the gallery. He sought the inevitable refreshment tables, whose colored waiters he could approach without violating anybody's sensibilities.
"Well, we know who's responsible, anyway," muttered another woman, patting the yellow roses in her hair under an extravagant Apollo knot. "And her husband only dead a week Wednesday!"
"I always said she was a cold hussy..."
"I've heard she doesn't have shoes on her feet, poor thing..."
"And well served, I say! I'm told she led the poor man a dreadful life..."
"... gambled away every sou..."
"... no more than twenty-five cents on the dollar, they say!"
At the far end of the wide gallery that fronted the lake January spotted the buffet, framed in a glowing galaxy of hanging lanterns, candles, and potted ferns. As he approached, above the growl of the crowd he finally heard music, a wistful planxty spun like gold thread from a single violin. He followed it to its source. The violinist perched tailor-fashion on one of the tall stools set behind the buffet for the use of the waiters, a bottle of champagne within easy reach and a dreamy expression in his black-coffee eyes. The gallery wasn't particularly high at that point, and January was a tall man. He caught the balusters, put a foot on the edge of the gallery, and swung himself up. One of the waiters called out, "Well, here's an answer to M'am Viellard's prayer now. You bring your music with you, Maestro?"
"I'm looking for Monsieur Viellard." January stepped over the rail. "What's happening here?"
The violinist set aside his instrument and generously offered him the bottle of Madame Viellard's best champagne. "Departed in command of a force to rescue the captives," he reported. Hannibal Sefton's white face was a trifle haggard but he seemed in better health than when January had seen him a week ago. With his long brown hair tied back in a green velvet ribbon and his shabby, oldfashioned coat, the fiddler had the look of something strayed from a portrait painted half a century ago. "He armed his trained servants, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen;